Irene Hwang
Irene Hwang is a lecturer and assistant chair of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She previously was the Willard A. Oberdick Fellow at Taubman College from 2010 to 2011. In Fall 2020, she served as the Goff Chair of Creative Architecture at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Architecture, a 2021 summer fellow at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities, and a 2022 Public Engagement Faculty Fellow at Michigan’s Center for Academic innovation.
Irene’s research, teaching, and service investigate the impact of architectural thinking and making upon society. In particular, she leads collaborative, curricular and co-curricular endeavors, such as the Equity in Architectural Education Consortium and the UM Public Design Corps, that work to convert architecture from a rarefied good and service, into a basic human right.
Her previous work in the private sector were in a variety of creative and strategic roles which i nclude the director of business development for the New York-based Deborah Berke Partners; senior communications manager at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York, director of publications and exhibitions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning, managing editor at Actar Publishers, and designer at Rafael Moneo Arquitecto. From 2008 to 2015, she was the co-founder of Constructing Communication, a graphic and editorial consultancy.
Irene is currently finishing a book, Get Practiced: Turn Your Architectural Education into a Career (Routledge). She has taught at Northeastern University, UIC Barcelona, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), and Elisava, the Barcelona School of Design and Engineering at the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC).
She earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in International Relations with a minor in Art History, and a Master of Architecture (with commendation) from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD).